Chapter 1 "Peculiar?"

"Peculiar?" Hao Ren looked curiously at the small wooden box in Vivian's hand. It gleamed with a blackish-red luster and bore delicate European-style carvings from three hundred years ago. Due to its age, there were some fine cracks visible on the edges of the box, but otherwise, it was not much different from an ordinary jewelry box from that era. "Maybe this was the only valuable thing you had back then, so you solemnly entrusted it to your subordinate."

"I may be poor, but I don't really care much about these precious things," Vivian muttered to herself as she opened the small wooden box, looking at the velvet lining inside. "All along, my main concern has been filling my stomach... What's so strange about this box anyway?"

As she said that, she put the box under her nose and sniffed. "There's a slight bloody smell, it's my own blood, probably left as a marker, but it's been three hundred years, and the scent has become a bit faint. The runes in the box don't have any special information either."

Hao Ren took the box and shook it gently, suddenly a thought popped into his head: "Maybe there's a hidden compartment in here... Why don't we take it apart and see?"

Vivian hesitated for a moment. Actually, she had this idea when she first got the box a few days ago, but she had been struggling with it until now, unable to bring herself to actually dismantle the box: after all, this thing looked quite beautiful. After frowning and fighting with herself for a long time, she finally nodded gently: "Yeah... It's not a solution to just leave it like this. Be careful when you do it, try not to damage the wood, maybe it can be repaired later."

Hao Ren curled his lips, thinking that she was indeed someone who had lived through hard times. Although she said she didn't care much about valuable things, she still felt a pang of heartache when it came down to it.

Hao Ren put the small wooden box on the table and casually took out a small carving knife and a screwdriver to pry at the wooden boards around the box. He was very careful when he started, not so much for fear of damaging the box, but for fear of damaging any hidden compartments that might exist inside the box. After removing a few pieces of wood, he did find something.

The thick bottom cover of the box was hollow.

"There's actually something hidden?" Vivian was surprised, then she extended her fingernails and poked around in the gap of the box's bottom cover, pulling out a corner of a yellowish-white fabric that looked like silk. Along with this piece of fabric, a blood-colored crystal no bigger than a thumb and only a few millimeters thick also fell out.

Hao Ren watched all this with anticipation, suddenly feeling that this process was just like a magical story: finding a hidden compartment in an old jewelry box from three centuries ago, inside which was hidden the secret knowledge left by a witch, the keeper of the jewelry box was an immortal who had lived for more than three hundred years, and the dismantling of the box was taking place in a basement... The whole process seemed quite high-end, except for the fact that the witch herself was a poor bat spirit.

Vivian carefully unfolded the strangely textured "fabric," and found that it was surprisingly thin and tough, seemingly made of a material far beyond the reach of ancient human weaving technology. After it was unfolded, it was nearly three feet square, with dark red "paint" densely covering the upper third, the remaining area was painted with some simple pictures, and there were also large blank spaces, seemingly intended for future use.

"This is... fabric used by the Egyptian pantheon. I remember Horus once gave me some of these things to help him treat a plague," Vivian said thoughtfully as she looked at the three-foot-square "silk." "These fabrics could not be made by humans back then."

Hao Ren noticed that the color of the writing on the fabric was a bit strange, with varying shades, as if it was not written all at once, but rather was a series of intermittent notes left in many different eras: "Did you write this?"

"It's my handwriting, and the writing material is my blood, otherwise they couldn't have been preserved for so long," Vivian struggled to discern the logical order of these messages. "...My handwriting was really ugly back then, and it's all in ancient writing, no one should be able to understand it now."

Hao Ren: "..."

"This is the beginning," Vivian pointed to a corner of the fabric and slowly read it out, "...'Some records are lost, disappearing along with memories, never to be found again, I can't even clearly know what I've lost. Keeping the records in a place of hibernation or burying them is not reliable, unattended, they may be destroyed by changes in the natural environment, and I may not even remember these things when I wake up. I should copy them again before everything is lost and keep them in the hands of a reliable servant, or let them enter a human museum. Even if I forget these things again, at least they are still preserved and have a chance to see the light of day again. Having a chance is good.'"

Hao Ren frowned: "What does it mean?"

"It should be talking about preserving these manuscripts. It seems I've preserved other similar messages, and I'm constantly preserving and copying them, but every time I wake up from sleep, I find that a part of the manuscript has been lost," Vivian deduced what happened back then based on her own habits. "It seems that I've tried putting them by my side before going to sleep, and burying them underground, but in the end, I found that if no one watched over these manuscripts, something would always go wrong, so in the end I chose to hand them over to servants, or to induce human archaeologists to put them in museums."

Vivian nodded to herself at the end: "Well, although humans have short lives, their inheritance is more reliable than the lives of异类 (yi lei – different kinds/non-humans), at least... more reliable than my brain. Inducing things into the human archaeological system seems like a good way to preserve relics."

Hao Ren chuckled: "That's now. It wasn't necessarily the case in ancient times. What if you encountered the burning of books and burying of scholars or the fire of the Library of Alexandria?"

Vivian curled her lips: "I saw the fire of the Library of Alexandria, but the burning of books and burying of scholars was definitely not as serious as later generations传 (chuan -passed down/said). When Ying Zheng burned books, he basically kept a copy, and unique copies weren't burned – they were directly hidden in his library."

Hao Ren: "...Then let's continue reading your will... oh no, message from back then."

Vivian lay on the table, trying hard to distinguish the ancient writings written hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of years ago. The symbols used above are now unknown to anyone. They are even primitive characters and hieroglyphs from the origin of mankind, and even mysterious characters that have never appeared in human history and that only Vivian still remembers which tribe or pantheon they came from. Of course, this also includes a small part of R'lyeh runes, but R'lyeh runes are not suitable for recording events, so this part of the content is very small. Vivian knows the meaning of these words, but can't explain where they originated from - it can be said that this is a secret letter that only one person in the world can decipher. If it really fell into the hands of human archaeologists, I don't know how much sensation it would cause.

But it is destined not to fall into the hands of those experts. Now only its writer is struggling to recall the former meaning of those words, and decipher them intermittently:

"...The following content is copied from other old manuscripts, and recalled, may not be very accurate, and the early years cannot be recalled.

"...Awakened in a wilderness, the place where the sun rises is a large beach, and the place where the sun sets is a mountain range. The long ice age has receded, and the earth seems to be recovering, and breathing is becoming more comfortable. Walking towards the direction of the warm wind, you can see grasslands and trees that are returning to green. I saw a human settlement in a pile of stones, they survived the freezing season and are hunting. I was regarded as a goddess and received food offerings. Began to regain strength...

"...The seasons changed two hundred times, the tribe began to fear my longevity and power, so they left. Moving towards the direction where the sun sets, crossed the mountains, flew over a very wide area, and saw white towers and palaces, which exceeded human skills, perhaps people similar to me lived here.

"The people in the tower did not welcome me, so I left. I met Amun and Osiris in the wilderness. They were traveling to a place with a large river flowing through it, and invited me to go with them, but sleepiness struck, and I needed to find a place to sleep. And recently I have been feeling irritable, and have inexplicably fought with people once, it is best not to continue traveling with others.

"Found a solid cave, set up defenses, and prepared to go to sleep. The last night was a full moon, the moonlight was bright, but I no longer had the energy to look at it."

"...Woke up in the cave, cold, it was snowing outside, hopefully it won't be another long freezing season. Traces of human settlements were found outside the cave, some abandoned stone houses and tools, it seems that a tribe or small kingdom once appeared here during my sleep. This time, continue to move forward in the direction where the sun sets... Found a large plain, and found a larger human settlement, their vitality is really tenacious.

"Strength began to recover again, and the weakness after sleeping has subsided. Moving forward in the direction of the cold wind, on the way, I began to recall more about my own power, which seems to be a good sign. I met Zeus and Hera, who were quarrying in the mountains, an interesting couple, they seemed to be planning to raise a group of humans, but I don't know how they will start.

"The strength recovered quickly, and seemed to return to its peak. Easily defeated a group of beasts and undead in battle. But after that, there was a strange anger that could not be dispelled, as if those beasts and their masters behind them were my enemies. Probably related to some lost memories... The strength continued to increase, and finally I eliminated the Lord of the Undead who invaded the territory. The anger subsided slightly, but sleepiness struck, and I needed to find a place to sleep. This time, I chose a mountain."

Vivian translated while adding her own speculation: "The first one should be the late Ice Age or a later stage, the second one seems to be seven or eight thousand years ago... Zeus had not yet created Mount Olympus, he did not really pay attention to the human kingdom until thousands of years later."

"This seems to be a diary of your every awakening and sleeping," Hao Ren frowned, "Why do you record these?"

Vivian shook her head: "I don't know... I can only continue reading."